A lot of excellent research exists in the West on the roots of the Indo – European group of languages. But no attempt has been made in Urdu and Persian to compile etymologies. However, Sanskrit dictionaries, like Arabic ones, are based on roots.
Therefore it is possible in some cases to relate Western Indo-European roots to Sanskrit ones. That is what Khaled Ahmed has done in this book.
It is different from other works on etymology in that it enlists words common to Eastern and Western language groups. Barring early philologists like Muller and Jones, no one has so far tried to look at this shared aspect.
This is the unexplored field of discovery and consequent excitement that this book wishes to share with readers. For instance, kana is “reed” in Punjabi; so is it in Greek. In the Western group, Greekkana has given rise to words like “canal”, “channel’, “Canon”, etc. In Skand Gupt, which is the name of an Indian king, skand means “jump” in Persian, skand means the same; in English “ascend”, the root skand means “jump”.
In Harsha, another Indian king, the root hr means “hair” rising under a sensation of joy; in Persianharas, it means “hair” rising under a sensation of fear; in English, “horror” means “hair” rising under a sensation of terror. This is the kind of verbal adventure the book promises.
This book will be of use to specialists in search of more shared words across the East-West divide of the Indo-European languages. It is also guaranteed to excite the common reader of language.
